Sony is hosting an official Sword Art Online fan exhibition in VR from today through March 10th. The event drops players into a familiar setting to celebrate the iconic anime with interactive exhibits, immersive clips from the show, and even a live performance.
As a part of Steam Next Fest, Incuvo Games is today releasing a free demo of its upcoming VR adaptation of Green Hell (2019), the popular open-world survival game.
Meta opened its Horizon Worlds social VR platform in December, rolling out its proto-metaverse project to Quest users in the US and Canada. During an all-hands company call this past week—where CEO Mark Zuckerberg dubbed Meta employees ‘metamates’—the company announced its Horizon platform has now exceeded 300,000 users.
Cult favorite VR mech game Vox Machinae is about to see some big changes come early March. The title is now slated to launch on Quest 2 for the first time, which will happen simultaneously alongside a major update that will add a full campaign.
Virtuoso, a VR music creation sandbox from developer Really Interactive, is officially launching on Meta Quest and SteamVR headsets next month, bringing with it an easy-to-learn interface that aims to make anyone feel like a musical wunderkind.
No Man’s Sky’s redemption arc isn’t over yet, as the open universe space sim has added some new combat challenges to the game in its 3.8 update, dubbed ‘Sentinel’. If you’re playing on PSVR via PlayStation 4 Pro, the update also includes a bump in image quality.
Much ado has been made about Meta’s latest avatars which juxtapose impressive expression against, well… a complete lack of legs. While full-body tracking is both desirable and achievable today with outside-in tracking systems, Meta doesn’t think it’s viable with inside-out tracking on headsets like Quest 2. However, the company say it’s investigating ‘fake’ legs instead.
Valve will soon offer official replacement parts for its Index VR headset (and possibly other Index products like controllers and base stations) via DIY repair site iFixit.
While Oculus doesn’t offer much publicly in the way of understanding how well individual apps are performing across its VR storefronts, it’s possible to glean some insight by looking at apps relative to each other. Here’s a snapshot of the top 20 Oculus Quest games and apps as of February 2022.
Half-Life: Alyx (2020) has been in the wild for a little under two years now, and modders have been busy using it to make cool stuff—just like they did with the original Half-Life (1998). Enter ‘Gunman Contracts’, a multi-chapter mod that scores some serious style points while smartly leveraging Valve’s Source 2 for some John Wick-style action.
It’s hard to find a single event with a bigger audience than the Super Bowl, which has made it one of the hottest pieces of advertising real estate anywhere. Meta went big this year with a 60 second ad spot that served to both promote VR to a national audience and solidify its rebranding from Oculus Quest 2 to Meta Quest 2.
SimulaVR, the startup behind its own open-source VR Linux distro, is creating a VR headset that aims to bring the full power of a PC to the standalone format. The company initially had plans to launch a Kickstarter last month, but has scuttled its crowdfunding campaign for direct-to-consumer sales.
Star Trek: Bridge Crew, Ubisoft’s co-op space battle sim, has been removed from Steam and the Oculus Store in ostensible preparation for the game’s complete shutdown.
Squingle, the psychedelic puzzle game for PC VR and Quest, is one of those “so out there, it’s difficult to explain” type of experiences. And as VR games creatively explode in every possible direction, the more vital it becomes to pop a human into frame to visually explain just what the hell is going on and why it’s so cool.
